AS THE WAR FOR Cambodia continued its rapid, perverted, escalating transformation, so too did Met Nang’s role change, pervert, rise. Nang did not remain with the recruits he’d led into the forest northwest of Kompong Cham. They were turned over to other Krahom cadre for induction, indoctrination and training at the new schools. No longer were recruits sent to Pong Pay Mountain. The cloaked animosity between the Communist allies, and the now total NVA domination of the Northeast provinces, caused the Krahom leadership to close the School of the Cruel and to open smaller, dispersed, less politically oriented schools in the southwest Cardamom Mountains.
The war became more conventional and Nang became a more conventional soldier—a soldier in a small army which continued to shadow its mentor force like a little brother might follow a big even after the two have fought.
For days, as fighting between NVA and ARVN/US units flared along much of the border and between NVA and FANK forces across the southern coast and deep into the interior, Nang marched southwest, halfway across the nation. There he picked up a platoon of twenty-six newly trained boys, yotheas, and two older, teenage officers. Then Nang, as platoon sergeant, political cadreman and tactician, marched the soldiers north at a murderous pace. He did not make friends, hardly made acquaintances. His friend was the Movement, the organization, the cause. Let the platoon leader and XO make friends, he thought. He’d made friends before. He’d had family before: What had happened to them—to them all? Nang would lead the platoon, could lead them too, because they too were products of Angkar Leou. They marched around Phnom Penh, through the NVA units besieging Kompong Chhnang, led by Met Nang as Met Sar had directed, to the outskirts of Kompong Thom where they rendezvoused with other Krahom elements, where they waited as Nang slipped from them, spied on them and on others, waited to be turned over to the 91st Division of the North Viet Namese Army for whom Nang and his boy-soldiers would serve as runners, insurgents and porters.
Before being placed under the operational control of the NVA’s 91st, Nang’s platoon was chosen to serve as honor guard at a one-day summit meeting of Khmer Krahom, Khmer Viet Minh and NVA officers northeast of Kompong Thom.
Dawn broke. The yotheas, only six of twenty-nine carrying firearms, entered the concealed jungle-swamp headquarters of NVA Colonel Le Duc Tu. Escorting them were four armed, strack, spit-shined and polished North Viet Namese soldiers. With few words the yotheas took up positions around the exterior of the large thatch-roofed hut. Unseen, felt, in camouflaged fighting positions and bunkers on every side, NVA troops stood vigilant, prepared less for battle than for inspection. Nang stood erect though deflated, proud yet sly. Instinctively he sensed every hostile presence as if thoughts produced odors and his nose had been sensitized to the smell.
Le Duc Tu and his entourage arrived at 0800. Met Sar arrived at nine. With him were three men Nang had never seen, yet to whom Met Sar seemingly paid homage. Ten minutes later Hen Samon, regional committee chairman of the Khmer Viet Minh, arrived with a squad-sized escort and four functionaries. The Viet Namese greeted all, embracing the Khmers as if they were hosting the meeting in their own country. An NVA staff photographer snapped a dozen pictures. Then the Viet Namese led the Khmers into the hootch, the meeting hut.
Before entering, Met Sar approached Nang. He did not speak to him, nor did he look at the black-clad boy’s cold eyes, but simply stood near him as if he, Sar, were taking a last deep breath of outside air before entering the building. Without motion Nang uttered lowly, “East—twelve APCs with full contingent of troops. Seventy-nine trucks. South—two to four battalions with two A A batteries attached. West—two batteries of rocket artillery. Eleven trucks. Infantry unknown. North—no report.”
For three hours the Krahom guards stood motionless, silent, taking pride in their endurance and vigilance. For three hours not a voice escaped the hut. Dark thunderhead clouds rolled in transforming the clear morning to dull oppressive noon. Colonel Le’s interpreter emerged. Quietly he directed three Viet Namese soldiers to bring food and tea. Politely Nang insisted he be allowed to serve his commanders.
The hut was dim. Four small oil lanterns cast flickering light upon the dozen men seated at two field tables, seated in collapsible chairs; speaking over pinned maps which attempted to recurl. Nang could smell the latent hostility. He poured tea at a small side table, tasted it, served the Krahom personnel.
“The Chinese have sent us sixteen thousand rifles,” the man to Met Sar’s left said. He paused for the Krahom interpreter to translate. “Sixteen thousand,” he repeated. “We’ve received three thousand.”
“Are you certain?” a Viet Namese major asked.
“We must have arms,” the Krahom leader said. “We know there can be difficulties in transit, but we’ve traced the shipments through Laos. We know they reached Prey Angkoal below the Kong Falls. As you have seen, many of our soldiers are armed only with clubs. This is not right.”
“No. No, it isn’t right. But perhaps, Brother”—Hen Samon addressed the Krahom leader without waiting for the interpreters to translate for the Viet Namese—“your yotheas are selling their weapons to the new lackey troops.”
“Bah!” Met Sar cleaned his lips. “You accuse them of what you fear?”
“Please,” Colonel Le said. He held up his hands. “Let’s break to eat.”
“Our information network is the best in Kampuchea,” the man next to Met Sar said. “Our soldiers are dedicated. We have thirteen thousand awaiting weapons. We must have them.”
“You shall,” Colonel Le answered after the interpreter finished.
“When?”
“After lunch.” The colonel smiled. “We will discuss it after lunch.”
The meeting broke. Nang, tiny, deflated, stayed, stood in the dim hootch, in the darkest corner, listening to the men chatter, their disparaging words couched in consoling tones and lavish insincere praise. Like a well-trained butler he stepped forward only when his commander’s cup or dish needed replenishment. Then he melted back against the thatch wall. For two hours the men ate, bantered, spoke of the siege of Kompong Chhnang, the plans for Kompong Thom, the ramifications of the ARVN-American cross-border assaults. Sated, Met Sar belched contentedly. He looked upon Major Huu with admiration. In his soft voice Sar said to the NVA officer, “We should be good friends.”
“Yes,” the major answered.
“I think Lon Nol’s agents try to keep us apart.”
“Most assuredly,” the major said. He smiled as if to himself he were saying, You fat brown fool, you think they want us united?
“Again the regime’s functionaries have approached us,” Met Sar continued, “but, of course, you know that.”
“Yes, we know.” Major Huu smiled.
Sar belched again. “An excellent meal,” he said benignly. Then added, “They’ve offered us amnesty.”
“What good is amnesty from a government that loses one percent of its country every day?”
“Ah, well, that’s true, Major. That’s very true.” Sar smiled softly. He turned very slightly and motioned to Nang for more tea. “The agents certainly can’t be trusted. They carry wood for all sides. They tell us Lon Nol offers us a position in the government in exchange for our support.”
“You’re intrigued, eh?”
“No. No, Major. They are losing very rapidly, though with American support they may hold out a bit longer.”
Into the Viet Namese officer’s voice crept an edge of harshness. “We’ll control Phnom Penh by August,” he said.
Sar swirled the liquid in his handleless cup. He turned, nodded to Nang as if approving the tea he’d been served. Nang inflated as he stepped forward, bulked up as he stood motionless behind Met Sar. “It’s such a shame,” the Krahom general said softly, “to have fine soldiers like Comrade Ky here and not to be able to arm them. President Lon’s agents have offered ten thousand machine guns and have said we’d be allowed to keep our units intact under FANK’s overall control.”
“You are talking to a two-headed snake.” Major Huu smirked.
During the afternoon session the meeting concentrated on specific ways the three Communist factions could cooperate with one another. Every delegate bent to extremes of false cordiality, each playing for time, committing as little as possible, attempting to gamer concessions and commitments from the others, ostensibly carving the region into three zones.
Moments before they dispersed Met Sar stuttered, “Ah...as...as to the rifles...”
“Yes, the rifles...” Colonel Le nodded. “We shall send you word about the delay.”
“Quickly,” Met Sar whispered to Nang. Again they were on the march. The meeting had dissolved as it had begun, with photographs snapped of diplomatic embraces as the North Viet Namese sealed off their perimeter and the Khmer factions withdrew in opposite directions. Accompanied by his old teacher, Nang marched his platoon southeast, toward the heart of the city they would soon attack. As they scurried along secret jungle-swamp trails led by a local Krahom guide, Met Sar quietly vented his spleen.
“Now the people will hear us.” He spoke softly in his convictions, rationally in his pious arguments, ruthlessly in his righteousness. “You are my brother in the Brotherhood of the Pure, Met Nang. You have been purified in fire. This battle will require you to swallow your pride and endure utter privation. But if you are pure you will carry us through. Tell the platoon Angkar Leou wishes all to construct themselves in the pure and proper mold. We are the sole legitimate leaders of the Khmer people. All others trespass against us. All trespassers are aliens. All aliens are enemies. If we are pure all enemies will fall to our sword, and their remains will be the compost from which a thousand-year dynasty will blossom!
“For the good of Kampuchea, Nang, we must struggle to excise that which is infected, to destroy the regime and liberate Kampuchea from the imperialists, the yuons and all the puppets who draw nourishment from them like ignorant calves from the teats of a golden cow. Americans storm the border, bomb every square meter. The ARVN loots, pillages and rapes. Expect them. Expect their bombs.” Met Sar paused in speech though continued his quick pace. He glanced from the corner of his eye at his trusted yothea, measured him, measured the impact of his words. Then he thought, Let the yuon soldiers topple Phnom Penh. Be one pace behind. In the moments between the military collapse and the shift of political power, step in, eliminate the yuon lackeys, substitute Krahom officers. It was a good scenario, a long shot, but one that could be played with minimum risk and run concurrently with other, more staid strategies.
“This invasion brings me sorrow and it brings me hope,” Sar said. “Presidents Nixon and Thieu have given their armies permission to occupy Khmer lands, to kill our children. Every Khmer is horrified. Every intellectual, every young person, every citizen who takes any pride in the nation is nauseated by this odious invasion.
“Yet more terrifying is the speed with which the yuon thrust topples the country. It must be halted. Fight beside them, behind them, but fight like a wounded soldier. Make them carry you. Let the Americans bomb their camps and convoys. If two spears are thrown at you, one behind the other, you must sidestep the first before you can deflect the second. It is kaul chomhor, a guiding principle, of Angkar Leou. Rebuild and replenish our forces with the arms and the yotheas we take from our enemies.”
Sullivan was hung over. His eyes would barely focus. Still he stared at the reports, at the newspapers strewn about his cot in the sleeping bunker of the teamhouse. He stared and he knew, thought he knew, the reality behind the words, the reality he projected behind the wall of present time.
By 4 May the US/ARVN incursion into the Fishhook area of Cambodia was paying off. As NVA supply units withdrew in chaos, U.S. forces advanced along Highway 13 to the outskirts of Snuol in Kratie Province—an area long controlled by the NVA, the city itself having recently fallen to total, undisguised Communist control. North Viet Namese gunners, the after-action report said, had opened up on U.S. 11th Cavalry troops as they neared the town’s airstrip. Almost immediately additional enemy fire—mortars, small arms, automatic rifle and rockets—had come from the town. For two days U.S. bombers and artillery pounded the town, reducing it to rubble. When American troops finally entered the devastated area they found no wounded or dead. The military commander concluded that all had been carried away—instead of postulating, Sullivan thought, that all had escaped via deep subterranean passages. Free world press reports labeled the seizure of the town an atrocity, reporting the story as if the town were a civilian bastion surrounded by enemy troops in turn surrounded by Allied troops. It did not help when the American commander said, “We had to destroy it in order to save it.”
“...in order to save it,” Sullivan muttered. “Real goddamned horror of Snuol is when the NVA seized the town in March, the goddamned two thousand civilians—who worked for em without choice, for the goddamned NTA, were pressed into deeper service or driven from the border area. Why don’t they report that? They were part of the wave of refugees that inundated us. Damned papers have a memory about eighteen hours long. They coulda asked me. Atrocity! Goddamned Allied atrocity of Snuol was our complete acceptance, complete dependence upon artillery and bombing as the means of subduing an enemy force in a town. That’s the atrocity. Even if there wasn’t a fuckin’ livin’ soul in the place.”
Sullivan shoved the report away, picked up the newspaper. On the campus of Kent State University, in Ohio, National Guardsmen, confronted by a jeering mass of students, had fired into the crowd killing four and wounding eleven. “Augh,” Sullivan moaned. He studied the accompanying picture, the girl’s face in the photo, her pain. He projected an ambiguous image into time beyond the present. “This sucker,” he whispered, “this is the decisive battle.”
President Nixon had infuriated antiwar people around the country by issuing a statement that included the line “When dissent turns to violence it invites tragedy.” This line was quoted four times in the article Sullivan was reading and related articles.
“Can’t win,” Sullivan grumbled. “Can’t win by winning.”
He turned back to his stack of reports. On 5 May, U.S. forces had rolled into Snuol. Other border towns—Mimot, Sre Khtum—were surrounded. In Washington the President had announced that U.S. troops would be limited to a range of twenty-one miles from the border and by a time frame of three to seven weeks. From Saigon President Thieu countered, saying the ARVN would remain if required. At Angtassom (Sullivan searched the team’s new map of Cambodia—he was not familiar with that country’s interior), FANK forces had faltered under heavy NVA assault. By the sixth, fifty thousand U.S. and ARVN troops had crossed the border from the Parrot’s Beak north to By Dop, near Phuoc Binh. Communist supplies were being found and captured so fast and in such quantities, the Allies could not evacuate all of it.
Again Sullivan studied the map of Cambodia. In the interior, 150 miles from the closest border point, 130 miles from the nearest American or South Viet Namese troops, NVA units had attacked Kompong Chhnang. They had then opened a second battle front at Kompong Som, 120 miles from the border. And due south of Phnom Penh, national troops were reported to have retaken Koki Thom.
Sullivan punched his left hand with his right. He spread the map of Cambodia over his pillow. He crushed his empty beer can. Then he tapped a finger on Phnom Penh. “Screw Travis,” he said to himself. “I’m going to be there. Within thirty days, I’m going to be there.”
8 May 1970—Alone Vathana stood at the window of her fourth-floor apartment, stood by the desk at which she’d learned the rudiments of commerce from her father-in-law. The desk was cluttered with shipping ledgers, crewmen’s pay slips and unfilled orders. On the floor behind the desk, leaning, facing the wall, was the framed photo of Norodom Sihanouk.
She put her hand on the sill to steady herself. Outside, the world seemed deserted, abandoned, gray, gray as she felt her skin to be, gray as she felt the future. Not a soul was to be seen. Communist soldiers, after again shelling the refugee camp with a few mortar rounds, enough to cause mass chaos, had withdrawn. In the two hours which followed not a refugee, not a merchant, not a construction worker had ventured out from their hovels, homes or apartments. Not a farmer rolled his oxcart toward the piers, not a single boatman or ferryman could be seen along the river. Even the riverwaters seemed still, reflecting the gray morning sky.
The view, the emptiness, made Vathana queasy in both stomach and mind. She placed a hand over her abdomen and rubbed gently, whispering a prayer as her hand circled. Then tears flooded her eyes. “What kind of future?” she whispered to that which she imagined might be growing in her. She thought to go to the kitchenette to make tea but she felt riveted to the spot by the window, felt as though not a single gram of strength remained in her thighs or knees or ankles, nothing there to propel her. She wished the radio were on but again the inertia of standing at the window froze her.
Vathana stood for another hour, barely moving, barely thinking, hoping to catch, sight of Sophan returning. A fleeting thought of her mother and father sped through her mind so quickly that after it had left she wondered what she’d thought. An image of her father-in-law in his new villa lasted longer, but the image was still, like a snapshot. Then a bitter resentment arose in her and she thought of her husband abandoning her, thought how un-Khmer was the man who had no loyalty to his wife, his family, his home. The bitterness strengthened her, cleared her eyes and ears. She stared through the window at that whose approach she’d not sensed. A low rhythmic shudder pulsed through the glass, an eerie beating concussion reached through, shaking her to the core. Then in the sky downriver she saw them looking like locusts, eyes bulging. Below them, steaming by the ferry crossing, was the lead riverine craft of an entire flotilla. More helicopters, flank security, appeared, darting over nearside piers and beyond the far bank over the swamps. The air jolted with their rotor beats. Flags flapped on the naval craft—the yellow with three red stripes of the Saigon regime and the starred red white and blue of the Americans.
Vathana watched, motionless, as the flotilla steamed in, the South Viet Namese vessels continuing past, the American docking or mooring just out of the channel. Upon the closest vessel she saw three soldiers, one half hidden, two plainly—a large white man with an enormous protruding nose and a man blacker than she imagined skin could be. As she watched, enthralled, a streak of sun broke through the overcast. Vathana subdued a chuckle. People flooded the streets. Americans, she thought. For Americans the monsoons delay. “Ah,” she sighed, and turned into the apartment to concentrate, “ah”!...but the monsoons always come.”
Before the battle of Kompong Thom commenced on 3 June 1970 invading armies captured or traded Cambodian territory without thought or respect for indigenous populations. Three weeks earlier, South Viet Namese President Thieu had issued a statement declaring he and Lon Nol had arrived at an “agreement in principle” for the continued use of ARVN forces in Cambodia.
In the United States the storm of protest had become a full-fledged hurricane. Hundreds of universities had closed. On 11 May the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved the Cooper-Church amendment to the Military Sales Act, outlawing the use of U.S. troops in Cambodia after 30 June 1970. This amendment also forbid American advisors to work with Cambodian forces and prohibited direct U.S. air support to FANK.
Through May battle actions had flared. The South Viet Namese navy blockaded Cambodia’s Gulf of Thailand coast to curtail the influx of supplies as U.S. units evacuated or destroyed thousands of tons of supplies from areas nicknamed “Rock Island East” and “The City” and from fighting, training and supply complexes too numerous to nickname. Major battles had flashed in the interiors of both South Viet Nam and Cambodia. On the seventeenth a ten-thousand-soldier ARVN task force with two hundred U.S. advisors had reached the large southeastern city of Takeo where 211 NVA troops were killed. On the nineteenth, attempting to relieve the pressure against the sanctuaries, and in honor of Ho Chi Minh’s birthdate, VC/NVA units shelled sixty Allied posts within South Viet Nam. The next day 2,500 ARVN soldiers retaliated with an unsuccessful raid against the mountain base at Bu Ntoll. North of Takeo ARVN and FANK forces linked up, driving a reported four hundred NVA soldiers into a killing field.
On the 23rd, ARVN forces answering the direct request of Lon Nol made their deepest Cambodian plunge to date with 10,000 regulars plus 1,500 Khmer Krahom attacking NVA positions in the giant Chup Rubber Plantation south of Kompong Cham. Much of the seventy-square-mile plantation was ruined by initial “softening up” air strikes. In standard operating procedure the NVA withdrew, avoiding decisive battle with the strong ARVN force. ARVN units rolled into Chup and looted and pillaged the plantation they’d come to free. The units then turned north, driving off Communist forces who had laid siege to Kompong Cham a month earlier.
In Hanoi, Norodom Sihanouk broadcast a lengthy appeal to all Khmers to fight the foreign interventionists. On the twenty-seventh, Cambodia and South Viet Nam established formal diplomatic relations.
The immense loss of materiel, as seen by the Hanoi Politburo, was appalling. Indeed, the Communist leaders estimated that their war effort had been set back at least a year. The Politburo sent orders to the NVA command center for the north third of South Viet Nam (this headquarters was separate from COSVN) to launch as many diversionary attacks as possible against local targets—anything to take the heat off the sanctuaries. Some of the heaviest fighting of the war in the I Corps region of South Viet Nam ensued. Even this fighting went poorly for the Communists. The gloom in Hanoi was lightened by two items—Hanoi’s America watchers reported that U.S. domestic turmoil would probably set back Allied war efforts at least a year, and on 3 June, President Nixon delivered his second televised “Cambodia” speech.
The President, claiming the operation the “most successful of this long and difficult war,” affirmed the resumption of U.S. troop withdrawals from Southeast Asia and reaffirmed the 30 June limit on America’s Cambodian incursion, including “all American air support” for Allied ground units.
On that same day, NVA units laid siege to the northwestern city of Siem Reap (more than two hundred air miles from the nearest border point) and heavily shelled the major crossroads and market city of north-central Cambodia, Kompong Thom.
The battlefield was prepared. It was time for the nationalist Communists to make their move. Nang squatted, rooted like a tree. The land to the south was intermittent forested swamps. Rice paddies stretched north and west in the Sen Valley and southwest to the Chinit. To the east, in a jungled plain, the main body of the NVA 91st Division and attached Khmer Viet Minh and Khmer Krahom units massed preparing to attack.
At twelve minutes past midnight an ear-splitting roar, freight trains rushing in the night sky, signaled Communist units—move! Sixteen 122mm rockets slammed into FANK garrison positions. Defenders scattered, regrouped.
“It’s time,” Met Taun, the Krahom platoon leader, whispered to Met Nang. Nang did not respond. “It’s time.” Taun leaned forward in his squat, ready to stand.
A second fusillade of rocket artillery ripped the night sky, erupting at the two FANK garrisons straddling Highway 6, one north and one south of the city. A Viet Namese trail guide found Met Taun in his squat. Without words the soldier signaled the Khmer unit commander that he should follow.
“In a short while,” Nang interrupted. He pulled the guide into the thicket.
The jungle to the east came alive with the muffled sounds of trucks and troops moving south. The main force was moving, circling south from where it would drive north, headlong into the FANK defenders. Again the shriek of rockets, the flashes, the explosions. Now not at garrisons but in the city’s heart.
“It’s time.” The guide’s voice was low, forceful. Nang held Taun’s arm tightly but said nothing. “Get up!” The guide stood, grabbed Nang and tugged. “Get up!” He grabbed Taun. Both sat, passive as sacks of rice. “Do you understand?” The guide became hysterical trying to lift Taun. In the blackness Nang squeezed Taun’s arm more tightly. “These browns are insane!”
The guide snapped his head up as if he were explaining to his own superior the exasperating futility of directing Khmers. Then he fled.
Fools, Nang thought. Troop footfalls beat quick cadence on the jungle roads about him. He felt calm, centered. There is nothing in this plan, he thought. The yuons have numerical superiority and they waste it. They will not waste us.
“Met Nang,” Taun whispered very quietly. “Why do we sit?”
“Do you wish to be the first to die?”
“Our place is at the front,” Taun said. He had turned, still in his squat, and seized Nang’s shoulder.
“What end will it serve to commit your yotheas to the yuon attack?” Nang sat as passive under Taun’s pressure as he had under the trail guide’s.
“Without fire one cannot blossom into a soldier,” Taun retorted with a slogan from his leadership class.
Nang grunted. “This is not a battle. This is two villainous lizards crashing against each other, gouging each other’s eyes as they fight for carrion.”
“I have heard much of the great Met Nang,” Taun began flatly. Along the trail spur the yotheas fidgeted in tiny concealments, waiting for the signal, itching to escape into the flow. “I have heard tales of courage, stories of strength...”
“Stories of patience, Met Taun?”
“To me, the great Nang appears to shirk from battle.”
The Great Nang, Nang thought, and smiled inwardly. Do they call me that? The thought pleased him. Stories of the Great Nang....
Taun clicked his flashlight, three quick, one slow. Noiselessly the boys rose—two with old SKS rifles, two with M-2 carbines, Met Soth, the platoon executive officer, with an American army .45 caliber pistol, the remainder armed with hardwood clubs and curved-blade rice knives. A new Viet Namese guide approached, announced himself. FANK answering artillery exploded in rice fields to their west. The whistled signals of NVA sergeants ricocheted in the woods. “Patience,” Nang whispered to Taun. “Swallow your pride.”
All night the NVA and FANK exchanged rocket and cannon fire. All night the infantry and armor moved to the final staging point, all night Nang slowed Met Taun, the platoon and thus the assault.
“What is it now?” a Viet Namese captain demanded of Met Taun.
“One of my units has broken contact...ah...somewhere, sir.”
“Leave them. Your high command wishes the glory of the first penetration to be yours...for your people.”
“Order Met Nang here at once,” Taun snapped to Met Soth. “What’s his excuse this time?” he muttered beneath his breath. “Sir”—Taun saluted the NVA officer—“I will take care of this. We will not delay.”
An entire primary thrust coiled in the hedgerows and treelines between the paddies just south of Kompong Thom. “Kill him on sight,” Taun snarled to Soth. Both officers searched the passage to their rear praying that Nang and the boys he’d misdirected would suddenly appear, join them and advance through the crouched NVA troops to the vanguard.
False dawn showed clear sky. Taun clenched his teeth. The ground remained dark. Heavy small arms fire erupted from other attack points. AKs barked, NVA soldiers shrieked, mortar rounds exploded. From an attack point on the west side of the highway a wave of firing soldiers sprinted toward the garrison’s berm. Rocket-propelled grenades fired from shoulder tubes flashed across open ground as another wave broke from the treeline.
Behind Met Taun, a wild scream. “Yaaaaah!” A figure flew. Taun twisted. A shrieking jabbing madman kicked his rifle away. Then, bounding, he punched Soth with the force of every cell in his body aligned, cursing madly. “Where have you been?!” It was Nang. He seized the XO’s pistol, cocked it, aimed at Met Taun’s head. “We’ve waited at the front for an hour. This is disgrace.” Behind Nang one Krahom squad stood poised with their clubs. Behind Soth and the prone Taun the second milled in stunned disarray. Farther back a dozen NVA soldiers watched.
“The attack falters on one weak link,” Nang shouted. Suddenly, overhead, the rumbling blast of three unmuffled T-28 fighters shook the ground. Then strafing runs began, began beyond Nang, the Cambodian National Air Force pilots sweeping in at such low level no ground troops saw or heard them until the planes were overhead. The first fighter swooped up, left, to set up a second run. From the forest swamp antiaircraft fire like giant jackhammer punches made the ground tremble under a graying sky dotted with black flak clouds. A tremendous cacophony of blasts and counterfire hid the single shot of Nang blowing Taun’s head apart.
For an hour the platoon retreated, confiscating first three automatic rifles, then another pistol, then an entire case of American grenades which had found its way into the NVA stores after being purchased a year earlier from a disgruntled troop of the ARVN 18th Division.
The early morning barrage and assault gave way to an uneasy daylight lull. Attackers dispersed to preestablished holding sites while defenders restocked their perimeter lines and prayed their air force T-28s would sniff out and destroy the enemy. In the almost impenetrable swamp to the south Nang lied to an NVA major about the predawn screwup, lied shrewdly, criticizing himself for allowing platoon leader Taun’s nervous fear of battle to split his platoon. Then, like moles, the yotheas on Nang’s order dug individually into the swamp floor and buried themselves. Only three remained above ground, Nang, Soth and a large, heavy-featured child named Horl.
“You know Met Sar?” Nang whispered to Soth as he led the two along a low-roofed animal corridor in the vegetation. Soth indicated he’d once seen the older man. “This battle is not our battle,” Nang whispered as if he were talking, for Met Sar. “Swallow your pride.” He did not comment further.
Nang led his short file deeper and deeper into the swamp. At a break, as he scouted forward and disappeared, Horl asked Soth, afraid to ask Nang, “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know,” Soth whispered.
“Is it true, Comrade Nang killed Taun?”
“Taun wasn’t pure.”
A sudden slap stung Horl’s ear. Both boys cringed. Nang was inches from their backs, embedded in a tangle of vines and briers as if he’d grown there. Without words, with rapid flicks of his hand, Nang signaled: Silence! Troops to the east. Stay put! Quiet! Then he disappeared. Soth froze. Horl, sensing danger, breathed shallow. His breath seemed to suffocate him. He shivered, afraid to gulp more air. Noise came from fifteen meters forward. Then a tug on his pant leg. He startled, whipped his face left into Nang’s beaming grin only an inch away.
“bury these,” Nang whispered. Again he disappeared. Horl looked at the weapons leaning against his knee. He turned to Soth, gestured, How-did-he-do-that? then chuckled, silent, relieved. Minutes later Nang again arrived unheard, unseen. He handed the boys a satchel with two claymore mines, blasting caps, wire, a ChiCom gas mask and a tin of AK ammo.
For three hours Nang crept silently from Soth and Horl’s growing cache site to a location the boys could not see. At times the trip took only eight or ten minutes, at times half an hour. With each trip Nang produced another weapon or field gear or food. On his last trip he brought an entire field hospital medical kit. “bury it. camouflage it. remember the site.”
The second assault on Kompong Thom began at 0200 on 4 June. Again Nang delayed his platoon’s advance until after the first Viet Namese soldiers had been shot. Now he directed the Krahom boys to help evacuate the wounded and dead and to furnish themselves with the one best weapon they found. By the dawn withdrawal the platoon was fully armed.
On 5 June the Communist attack commenced exactly as it had on the third and fourth. Again the defenders held, though the fighting was bitter and all the homes and buildings in the outlying areas were destroyed. Peasants either had fled into the city days earlier or were captured or killed. By dawn the small adjacent hamlet of Am Leang was in NVA control. Again the attackers withdrew and dispersed. Again the defenders reinforced the city’s perimeter turning Kompong Thom into a walled fortress. On the evening of the sixth, the day on which South Viet Namese Vice-Premier Nguyen Cao Ky declared before the Cambodian National Assembly that ARVN forces would assist FANK whenever and wherever requested, the NVA struck in the familiar pattern. Again the defenders countered with tremendous enfilades from the southern berm. Again NVA rocket and mortar rounds exploded along Highway 6 and across the defenders’ line. Within the city, ammunition reserves reached a critical level. Troops, weapons, ammunition were transferred from north barricades to south. At 0300 on the seventh, the 91st, using their APCs for the first time in the battle, struck the north wall. Other elements hit the northwest, damaging the hospital, the west and the east. By 0400 the APCs, with a thousand soldiers in support, had broken through and flooded the north quadrant. By five the west attackers had overrun FANK positions, scattering defenders amongst the homes and alleyways of the city. At six, troops at the south gate blasted through, crossed the Sen River and swarmed in. By dawn Kompong Thom had fallen to the NVA.
Met Nang entered Kompong Thom not as a liberator or as a conquering soldier, but as a spy, an agent, a nationalist, a yothea of Angkar Leou. At first he hugged the shadows between narrow back street shops. Then, increasingly confident, he directed his armed band to rip down and burn the large posters of Lon Nol that adorned various public and private buildings. Sporadic fire could be heard throughout the city as pockets of FANK resisters were ferreted out by the Viet Namese.
“Soth”—Nang flicked the barrel of his new rifle—“tell them to watch over the Khmers. This...” Nang stopped, held up his hand for silence and stillness. From the far end of the street a reinforced squad of NVA soldiers appeared, advancing cautiously in well-spaced pairs. Nang studied the faces of the two pointmen. They were empty—no fear, no hate, no elation-only automaton vigilance.
This, Nang thought, this is it. This is the fight, the main battle. This is what Met Sar meant. Hadn’t he warned Nang? Hadn’t he told Nang that this battle, this victory and the resulting alignment of forces would change Kampuchea for the next thousand years. Yes, Nang thought. Every action is justified. Every death is an investment in the future of Khmer civilization.
Nang pointed to several yotheas, indicated they should retreat, circle the building south. To others he indicated north. To Soth he whispered, “take two through the tailor’s shop, four into the gristmill.”
The North Viet Namese soldiers proceeded slowly, perhaps too slowly, perhaps because their leader was far more used to fighting amongst trees and peasant huts than amid city buildings. About them the block seemed lifeless, inert. The day had dawned clear. High above Kompong Thom an American OV-1 Bronco reconnaissance plane photographed the area. Speeding up Highway 6 from Baray a combined FANK and ARVN armored column closed in on Kompong Thom. In the streets everything remained silent. Then, as if the buildings themselves were armed, a single automatic weapon, then twenty-eight, erupted, killing eleven NVA conquerors, sending the rest into retreat.
“Cache their weapons,” Nang ordered as his yotheas fell upon the corpses, stripping the soldiers of anything of potential value, slicing their abdomens, then vanishing into back alleys to the silent cheers of Khmer townsmen astonished by the speed and cunning of these small, black-clad boys. From hidden, makeshift alleyway bunkers Khmer men and women emerged, the older ones bowing, their hands clasped before them in grateful leis, hands held high signaling the utmost respect; the younger, less formal, asking, “Where are you from? Who are you?”
“Yotheas of Angkar Leou,” the boys whispered as they scurried toward the next ambush site.
“Join us.” Nang clutched at every youth that approached. “Join the Movement. Join Angkar Leou. We are the soul of Kampuchea.”
Ten blocks east the band repeated their ambush, then six blocks north, then in the southwest quadrant. Then the ARVN shelling began and Nang ordered his platoon, now thirty-seven strong, to retreat to the forest.
Kompong Thom fell to the NVA on 7 June. On the eighth, FANK forces with uncoordinated “fifth column” assistance ousted the Viets.
Along the border, Communist forces regrouped and counterattacked U.S. forces near Mimot; in South Viet Nam, VC terrorists punished the Allies by murdering 114 civilians at Thanh My, 17 miles southeast of Da Nang.
A battle pitting four thousand ARVN and two thousand FANK soldiers against fourteen hundred NVA and Khmer Viet Minh troops at Kompong Speu saw that south central city fall to Hanoi’s forces on 13 June, only to be retaken and looted by the Allies on the sixteenth.
By 20 June, Phnom Penh was both inundated with refugees and nearly completely cut off from the Cambodian countryside: in the north the battle for Kompong Thom reflared; rail lines to the west (Battambang and Sisophon) were severed; huge stores of rice at Krang Lovea were seized by the NVA; Highway 1 just north of Neak Luong was again cut; and several bridges of Highway 4 (over which all of the interior’s fuel oil traveled) were blown up. The popular crusade against the North Viet Namese, which had attracted more than eighty thousand volunteers to FANK in three months disintegrated as morale fell because of minimal superpower support and military realities. Only the late arrival of drenching monsoon rains bogged down the armies.
American aid to Cambodia, which had totaled about eight million dollars since March, dried up. Though 34,000 ARVN soldiers remained in Cambodia, the Americans were gone. Again Richard Nixon spoke to the American people. He ruled out any future use of U.S. forces in Cambodia. He further said the United States would not assist the ARVN with air support. The one card he continued to hold was the option of bombing the enemy, but any such bombing was, by law, to be uncoordinated with ground troop activity.
Chhuon lay on his back. It was dark. The rain was very heavy and the noise of the drops pounding on the roof, splatting in the mud of the orchard, dinging off a pot in the kitchen, increased the tension in his chest and abdomen. Sok rubbed his forehead. The light pressure of his wife’s fingers hurt but he neither moved nor spoke. On the other side of the plaited palm-frond partition Hang Tung shuffled papers, preparing for the regional chairman’s visit. The rustling of the pages irritated Chhuon. Sok placed a tiny candle in a holder the size of a bottle cap, lit the wick and placed the light on Chhuon’s forehead. He lay very still, closed his eyes, falling into himself, attempting to see the demon. Sok covered the candle with a glass cup. The flame immediately dimmed and Chhuon felt the sucking. The light flickered lowly. Sok muttered a prayer then fell silent. The suction became stronger. Chhuon concentrated on the demon, working his mind, pushing the demon from the back corners of his skull, from down by his throat, from his inner ears, prying the demon into the open area behind his eyes, pushing, pushing. The flame died. A small ember glowed below a thin wisp of smoke. Then that too disappeared. The suction lifted the skin of Chhuon’s forehead but the demon floating behind his eyes remained anchored with lines to his ears. Chhuon went to work. The cable to his right ear needed cutting. He conjured up a hacksaw and set to, rhythmically, all but imperceptibly, rocking his jaw as the saw blade chiseled tooth by tooth into the cable. Then he shuddered. The demon, like a living amoebic ghost, rolled, shot a protoplasmic finger to the top of his skull. Chhuon tried to close the bone but the goo oozed into minute cracks and became embedded. In the dark Sok lit a second candle, placed it on Chhuon’s forehead and covered it with a cup. The first suction had been strong enough only to lure the demon into the open; the second, stronger, forced it to counterattack. All inside his mind faint fingers grew like crystal trees branching, spreading, grew expanding and netting and taking over. Chhuon trembled. His body became rigid. Sok, sure it was a reaction to the departing evil, whispered a silent prayer of thanksgiving. Still the fingers flowed, penetrating easily now into tissues they’d never before attempted to control. How easily they moved. Chhuon wept, inside, watching the movement, temporarily exhausted, unable to fight the spread. Sok replaced the first cup with a third as Chhuon had instructed before he lay down for the choup rite. Now the demon twitched like a spiderweb tapped, plucked like a violin string, twitched confused abandoning fingers deep in virgin tissues, consolidating and reinforcing the gains about the larynx, thickening the lines to the skull anchors, rebuilding the cable to the ear. Chhuon’s breathing stopped. From deep, deep in his abdomen, a star, a tiny sun, rose, light rays blasting into a fog-shrouded darkness, stabbing, then suddenly shifting, the glow moving no longer in him but a hand’s width above his stomach, swirling, illuminating the entire exterior. Still Chhuon did not breathe. From the far side came Hang Tung’s complaining mumbles. The sun blipped, disappeared. The demon turned invisible. Chhuon lay very still, breathing slow shallow breaths. He lay confused, uncertain if at the last moment the demon had been exorcised, sucked into the bottle and suffocated, or had it simply rehid? Had the sun vanished, or had it returned to his center triumphant? He lay, not certain, not certain.
“Uncle, come here! I need you.”
Chhuon did not respond, as if in ignorance the summons could be avoided. How hard the past months had been on him, on his family, on the village. Ever since Kpa’s visit in July he had felt the demon, known of its existence, wished to exorcise it, yet had not had the will or the strength. With each order obeyed he’d grown weaker, grown sadder. After the Americans invaded in the East, invaded only to be disgraced and beaten into withdrawal—according to Hang Tung and the Khmer program on Radio Hanoi played over the village’s new public address system over the village’s one radio—Chhuon’s hopes had died and in the despair the demon had thrived.
Kpa had appeared at that time, appeared before dawn, dressed in black, armed, wanting Chhuon to gather his family and to flee. “I can rid the village of Committee Member Hang,” Kpa had whispered with incongruous formality.
“If Hang is killed,” Chhuon whispered back, “twenty will be executed. It is so written.”
“They are already dead,” Kpa had said.
“I can protect them,” Chhuon answered.
“No!” Kpa shook his head. He left before Hang woke, promising to return, but he’d not been seen again.
For weeks Chhuon whispered with Sok whenever Hang left. “We might escape to Phnom Penh. My sister Voen will help us.” “Yes. Voen and Chan. He’s a rich man now.” “We’ll stop in Stung Treng. Cheam must flee too.” “How I would like that. Kim always makes my heart light.” “We’ll stop first in Neak Luong. Mister Pech will help us, too.” With that mention, Chhuon would be silent. He found he could not speak of his eldest daughter who immediately came to mind when he mentioned Mister Pech—as if to speak of her would damn her to suffering as he’d damned his favorite son and youngest daughter to violent death. Chhuon knew he was more afraid of the flood held behind that dam than he was of Hang Tung and the yuons. And, too, there was uncertainty over reports of Samay’s having left the monastery, having fled, having joined the maquis. To leave might be to abandon him. Yet to stay meant Peou, Sakhon, would be educated in the new school, and that too worried Chhuon. The terrifying ferocity of the bombings deep in the forest which shook the village were not as horrible as the well of horrors behind the floodgate in his mind.
More weeks followed. Each day’s talk became shorter. The pipedream, the fantasy of escape, barely smoldered.
“Uncle? Did you hear me? I need you.”
Sok lay a hand on Chhuon’s wrist. Quietly she rose and padded to the front room. “My husband is deep in sleep,” she said politely. “May I—”
“Then wake him.” Hang’s features sharpened as he glared at the weathered woman, old at forty.
“Uncle.” Hang smiled broadly. “The commissar wishes to know what our maximum contribution can be. The army is short of rice.”
Chhuon wiped a fake wooziness from his face to stall for time. “The village is beyond its maximum,” he said.
“No. No. I’m certain we can find more generosity in the villagers.”
“Many of the families have no rice,” Chhuon answered.
“Then let those join the People’s Liberation forces. They’ll be well fed.”
“They are the old and the children.”
“Ah, the others are holding rice, eh? Assemble the chairmen of the interfamily groups. You will tell them...um...each group will contribute ten sacks of rice.”
“Five hundred...”
“No! Hundred-kilo sacks. Each group will contribute a thousand kilos of rice. That’s what I will have for the commissar. Today!” Hang paused. He smiled. Then his smile vanished. Lowly he said, “Any group refusing to cooperate will be dealt with severely.”
Chhuon did not look at Hang Tung but over his head. To disagree with the committee member, Chhuon knew, was useless. “I will...”—Chhuon muffled a belch, turned—“...tell...” He fell to one knee, gasped, hunched, grabbed his stomach.
“Uncle?!”
“It’s...it’s this damned...heat...” Chhuon sputtered. He regained control of his breath and straightened. “Goddamn,” he growled.
“It’s painful? Yes. That I can see.”
“Yes. Damn. It hits me like that. Without warning. I must lie down.”
“It would be better to stay upright, Uncle. Walk. That’s the best thing. I’ve asked the doctor for you.”
The heat subsided as Chhuon walked, the repressed bitterness did not. The first chairman’s reaction had been passive acceptance of the impossibility—the reaction Chhuon had expected—yet in the reaction he found great sadness. In the sadness he found bitterness. In the bitterness he found a spark of hope.
From the northeast quadrant Chhuon slogged over the mud-thick path toward Ny Non Chan’s. He walked shoeless. The army had requested a contribution of footwear. No one in Phum Sath Din was allowed shoes other than flimsy Japanese sandals of aerated rubber which stuck in the mud. As he paced toward the village vice-chairman’s home the earth trembled. His knees seemed to rattle with the quaking. Chhuon froze. At first there was no noise! His head snapped up, eyes searching the dense overcast. He felt a slight concussive wind, then he heard the blasts. To the north, he thought. Perhaps six, eight kilometers. He squatted. The trembling continued for a full minute then ceased. Then farther north another bombing. Then quiet stillness.
Chhuon remained in his squat. Again he looked up. The village paths were empty. Though he suspected exaggeration in most of Pen Sovan’s reports over Radio Hanoi he believed the broadcasts he’d heard about American B-52s raining death upon the land. He’d heard firsthand reports from soldiers, and he’d trembled inwardly time and again when Hang Tung had shouted bitterly about the United States waging its unprovoked colonial war against Cambodia. He knew, too, that the North Viet Namese were moving in more and more units in the wake of the American withdrawals, that it was these units which were without rice, and that the units close by never remained long in one place for fear of detection by the high-altitude bombers.
What he did not know was that the North Viet Namese had begun large-scale expansion of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos and Cambodia to ensure the invulnerability of the route. Approximately fifteen thousand trucks were now working the trail. New lines were being run to Stung Treng City and to Rovieng, a town fifty miles north of Kompong Thom.
For a week rumors had crisscrossed the village of a new NVA armored unit encamped in the jungle to the north. Then Heng and Khieng had come in on pass, had strutted about flashing their new rifles at the younger boys and bragging about the tank crews whom they supported. The crews were all young women from North Viet Nam, they said. Women trained at the Soviet armor school in Odessa on the north shore of the Black Sea. With them, though not loggered together, were two batteries of 130mm self-propelled long-range artillery guns. An image flickered behind Chhuon’s eyes, a fantasy of the bombs destroying the tanks. The thought scared him. Anything which could so shake the ground, which could so quake mother earth as the bombers, had to be evil.
Chhuon whispered a prayer, then quietly he vowed, “I will become enlightened for the sake of all living things.” Then he beseeched the Blessed One, “What has happened to my country? What will happen to my people?”
At Ny Non Chan’s, before Chhuon was able to utter the new contribution order, Chan blurted, “We have great trouble.”
“We always have great trouble.” Chhuon attempted to avoid the embarrassment of not knowing.
“New trouble. Aiee!” Chan pulled Chhuon close. He bowed his head, shook in empathy. “A Viet Namese soldier,” he blurted. “He’s been caught consorting with...by force.”
“Who?”
“Their guards have him. There’s talk of denouncing him.”
“Who did he pluck?”
“She’s a good woman. I’m certain it was by force.”
“Who?” Chhuon pushed Chan’s hands from his own.
“I cannot believe she would bed them for rice. She cannot be that desperate.”
“Brother”—Chhuon grabbed Chan firmly—“tell me who you are speaking of.”
Chan avoided Chhuon’s eyes. Then he mumbled, “Ry. Your cousin’s wife.”
For a long moment Chhuon said nothing. Then, quietly, firmly, he passed on the contribution order. “That,” Chhuon added, “is great trouble.”
“The village can’t last until harvest. If...if we contribute...a thousand kilos...more than a week’s food for everyone...”
Suddenly a shot cracked. Chhuon whipped around, stared, then spat, “Come!”
The two men ran from the house, down the alley between the old homes of the Ny family, across the village center toward the wat. Before them a crowd of forty or fifty had formed about a North Viet Namese jeep. Up and down, the village street was lined with foreign soldiers. Chhuon squirmed into the mob, to the front. “Serves him right,” he heard several men say as he passed. Before him, lifeless, facedown in the mud, lay an NVA soldier. The shot had evidently been fired into his skull from behind as he’d knelt with his hands tied behind his back. Chhuon raised his eyes to the officer standing in the vehicle. The Khmer crowd increased to a hundred.
“We have told you,” the soldier said in perfect Khmer, “that under Prince Sihanouk there is no threat of rape or looting. Your village is protected. Our soldiers must set an example of perfect order and discipline. The Alliance of Khmer and Viet Namese shall break old barriers and build new trust.”
“Did he really rape her?” Chhuon heard a villager ask.
“It makes no difference, eh?” a second responded. “It’s only important to show how we are protected.”
“Ah, Uncle.” Hang Tung’s voice came softly over Chhuon’s shoulder. “You see how they honor us by punishing one of their own who transgresses.” Chhuon turned toward Hang. Behind him Ny Non Chan’s face distorted in an eerie smile. Chhuon shut his eyes. He attempted to repeat the vow—I will become enlightened...but the demon flared, exploding in his mind, and Chan’s eerie smile repeated on Chhuon’s face. Then Hang Tung’s voice penetrated his ears and sped through the cables. “You’ve arranged for the rice?”
Two weeks passed. In the fields, in the depleted market, at the wat, wherever citizens of Phum Sath Din met publicly, talk was about the NVA having killed one of their own to protect the village. No one spoke of Ry. No one spoke of the rice contribution, knowing a complaint, overheard, could mean punishment. In private they worried about the food stores. The harvest would be late because of the delayed start of the monsoons, and most stores had been confiscated. “A thousand kilos is not much.” Hang Tung smiled for Chhuon. “In a village this large, why, a thousand is nothing.”
“That was not the first thousand,” Chhuon had answered, smiling, acting, keeping it light. “Nor the second or the third,” he added, almost laughing.
“You know these peasants,” Hang Tung said. “They have rice hidden everywhere. The family bunkers are full.”
“I think you overestimate, Nephew. Only the old families had extra and they shared it with the new people. And the army. Some people have taken to eating morning-glory greens.”
“They’re very good. Very good for you. People should eat more greens.”
“They need rice, too,” Chhuon said flatly, dropping the pretext of amiability.
“The army needs rice,” Hang Tung snapped. “If COKA says one thousand kilos or ten thousand kilos or one hundred thousand kilos, the village will pay. In the meantime, tell them to plant more. You’re the agronomist. How late can late-season be planted?”
“There’s no paddy space left. The yuons...” Chhuon halted. He glanced at Hang Tung. The boy smirked. “Our brothers from across the border have, rightly so, cordoned off all the far paddies. Those close by are...”
“And maize?”
“The roadways are all...”
“And vegetables?”
“Yes. Every family has a...”
“You see. There’s enough. Morning-glory greens. Indeed! Perhaps the orchards should be cut to make room...”
“The orchards! Never!”
“Uncle!”
Pressure from outside elements continued to be paramount in Cambodia. By midsummer U.S. domestic and political reaction to its own incursion had assured the North Viet Namese of their secure position throughout Indochina. In the outskirts of Kratie, at the new COSVN headquarters, the North Viet Namese began a slow, systematic emasculation of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the National Liberation Front. The process was subtle, combining mild criticism sessions with reeducation—yet, ironically, because of the successes of the Allied incursion, the Southern rebel leadership was essentially imprisoned deep in Cambodia by the Northerners, and at a substantial distance from the war in the South. This allowed the North Viet Namese to substitute their own cadremen for Southerners who resisted reeducation. New-thought was to supplant old; socialist nationalism gave way to strict Northern Marxism; the petit bourgeois was purged; the proletariat served. To Hanoi, America’s withdrawal meant the superfluous baggage of the South’s fragmented political opposition was no longer necessary. The last element of civil war, not in Cambodia but in South Viet Nam, was removed, replaced by North Viet Nam’s frontal and terrorist invasions in its bid for regional hegemony. In conjunction with the removal of the Southern rebel leaders, the NVA in Cambodia began a second-phase program of massive training of the essentially apolitical, headless Khmer Rumdoah—the peasant farmers and urban youth who had rallied under the name and to the call of North Viet Nam’s new marionette, Norodom Sihanouk.
And yet all was not necessarily lost for the Allies. For all the bungling, the unheeded advice, and the unread analyses, the incursion into the NVA sanctuaries, albeit coincidental to the administration’s announced and failed objectives, did stop the NVA from immediately toppling Phnom Penh.
Also, for the first time in the war substantial numbers of Northern soldiers had defected; twelve thousand NVA had been killed; eighteen thousand weapons had been captured along with 6.5 million antiaircraft rounds, a million rifle rounds, thousands of 122mm rockets, hundreds of military trucks, and six Mercedes-Benz autos. A quarter million rations of rice, enough to feed four divisions for three months, had been destroyed; an entire rear service group (the 86th) had been wiped out and the main communications liaison system, responsible for training, equipping and assigning replacement soldiers, was ruined.
North Viet Nam’s decision was difficult and hotly debated. In the end those calling for rebuilding the sanctuaries won over those who desired to plunge headlong into the now certain military conquest of Cambodia. Yet the decision to temporarily withdraw from the secondary objective (Cambodia), and to pull manpower and materiel back to rebuild the border base complexes to assist the primary objective of capturing South Viet Nam, pivoted not so much on their tactical losses as on two other factors: first, in the wake of the American domestic storm there was no possibility of a second incursion, thus new sanctuaries would be forever secure; and second, there was the fear in Hanoi that Phnom Penh’s fall would reinvigorate American hawks before they had been rendered politically impotent.
In early September, after the news of the “liberation” of Stung Treng City reached Phum Sath Din, new orders and new horrors descended like the seven plagues. The Viet Namese Communist Party Central Committee’s (the Hanoi Politburo’s) Central Commission for Kampuchean Affairs, headed by Le Duc Tho and assisted by Vo Chi Cong (who had engineered the Khmer Viet Minh repatriation of 1969 and 1970), ordered COKA (the Central Office for Kampuchean Affairs), headed by Le Duc Anh, to reorganize the “liberated” Khmers. Directives were routed through the A-40 subdivision at Siem Reap where COKA’s headquarters were adjacent to those of the NVA.
“There is no rice left.” Ry wept. “They’ve taken everything. Even the maize, salt and oil.”
“I know, Sister,” Sok tried to comfort her. It was early evening. The farmers had just returned from the fields to find the new orders posted on gates, at the wat, along the deserted market row. In their homes they found enough food for three days. “They left me only one rice pot,” Sok said sadly.
“And the boys. Where is Mister Committee Member? I should scratch out his eyes.”
“Ssshh! Ry, you must not be heard.”
“Where are they?”
“My husband has argued with him all day. All day he has begged. Chhuon’s at the pagoda. Tung’s with the red-eyed devils.”
“They’ve taken all the food. All the boys. Most of the girls.”
“Only those over fourteen. Only for training. They’ll come back to serve in the militia. Maybe they’ll have more to eat.”
“The sixteen-year-olds are being conscripted. But us...without food...”
“They said it will remain in the village. There are so many with nothing, some with hoards. Now it’ll be distributed equally. It will be rationed so we do not all starve.”
“Sok! Sok! Listen to yourself. You sound like them.”
“Dear Sister, what can we do. My husband knows best. We must...”
“escape.” Ry uttered the word very low. She studied Sok’s face for shock, for disbelief, “into the forest.”
Sok remained calm: After a moment she responded quietly, “There are patrols.” Now Ry did not respond. “And the bombings. And it’s against the rules.”
“tonight,” Chhuon whispered to Sok.
“tonight,” Sok signaled Ry when they met for ration distribution.
“tonight,” Ry signaled Ny Nimol, Ny Non Chan’s wife. Quietly throughout the village, the old people, members of the original four families, signaled one another and went home.
“Uncle”—Hang Tung smiled at Chhuon after he’d eaten heartily, devouring a dinner of four or five rations—“in a little while you’ll accompany me.”
“Tonight?” Chhuon asked. He blinked his eyes, fighting for an image. Then he tried to remain as empty of emotion as a rock, tried to see himself an undistinguished small stone.
“Yes. Were you going somewhere?”
“Only to bed,” Chhuon answered. “The rain’s heavy and my knees are swollen. I hoped to sleep.”
“Sleep later. Tonight we’ll have fun. Major Nui has invited me to play cards. You must come.”
“Oh Nephew, I’m so tired...”
“You must come. We’ll leave at 2100 hours. Rest now.”
The card game took place at Ny Non Chan’s house. Chhuon, Chan, Major Nui, Cadreman Trinh and Hang Tung sat at a low rectangular table, Major Nui at one end, the other end open. At the center of the table there was a charcoal heater. Above it, boiled a pot of oil. The men had finished snacking on thin slices of crayfish flash fried in the oil. Nimol removed the pot, leaving the embers exposed. Chhuon felt mesmerized by the glow. He stared at one particular coal glowing brightly on two edges, cracked and dark through the middle.
“They’re very hot, eh, Uncle?” Hang chuckled pleasantly.
“Yes,” Chhuon said self-consciously.
“You seem preoccupied tonight, Chairman Cahuom,” the cadreman said.
“It’s the crayfish,” Chhuon said. “I used to catch them in the river with my boys. I haven’t tried it in years.”
“Some of the soldiers caught these.” The cadreman smiled. “They’re camped by the bridge tonight. Perhaps we’ll have more tomorrow. They shine a light into the river and it attracts them. That’s how they do it.”
“Oh.” Chan tried to look amused. “I’ve always caught them during daylight.”
“Ah,” the cadreman chuckled. “But the big ones emerge only at night.”
Nimol returned with a bowl of watermelon seeds. She removed the heater. The seeds were a gift from Major Nui. As the major shuffled the cards Chhuon, feeling guilty, ravenously yet delicately picked at the seeds.
“Do these come out at night, too?” Chhuon tried to joke but the humor fell flat. Hang checked his watch. It was nearly midnight.
In the far distance, perhaps ten kilometers, a faint rumbling could be felt. “Those bastards,” Major Nui said. “Every night, every day. Why do they bomb? Troi oi! Almost never do they connect. They keep me awake.”
“Come, deal the cards.” Hang Tung laughed.
Chhuon raised his first card but he did not recognize it. He was thinking about the river, about tonight. Why tonight? Though it was not the first night he’d played cards with the Viet Namese, it was the first time the game had been called on such short notice and for such a late hour.
“The major tells me,” Hang Tung began, his smile wide, “that we’ll be seeing new rules tomorrow.”
Chhuon did not take the bait. He still had not recognized his card but thought it was not a card at all but a faint moving growing sheath, growing like a crystal, like his demon. His eyes darted up to Chan then dropped to the card. He wondered if the others could see his card pulsate. He cautioned himself, tried to be the rock.
“What new rules?” Chan asked, picking up his second card.
“New passes,” the major said. “With all this bombing we can’t let anyone travel without a complete itinerary.”
Chhuon lifted his second card. As it touched the first the demon’s filaments spread and concealed its face. The emotions of a rock, Chhuon thought.
“No one travels now,” Chan was saying. He reached for some seeds.
“Any unauthorized travel will be dealt with most severely,” Hang said.
“That’s as it’s been. What are the new rules?”
Hang put his cards down. “It’s strictly a matter of paperwork,” he said. “New request forms. New passes. And enforcement.”
At that, rifle fire was heard erupting by the river. Then screams. Chhuon jolted upright. Chan slumped imperceptibly. The major paid no attention. Cadreman Trinh and Hang Tung smiled.
“Troi oi!” The major dropped his hand. “Let’s see if they’ve got more crayfish.”
The riverbank was lit with torches and lanterns. On downriver trails flashlight beams flickered between tree trunks. A dozen Viet Namese, soldiers and a dozen young Khmer militiamen cursed, prattled, strutted. Four bodies lay by the water’s edge—two children, two women. The soldiers laughed, congratulated one another on the fine kills. A radio rasped. The two men who’d fled downriver had been caught.
Chhuon watched, empty, the rock, yet worried, agitated deep within. The soldiers soaked rags in gasoline and jammed them into the men’s mouths. Their ankles were tied, their elbows wired together behind their backs. The soldiers toyed with a torch, bringing it close, then withdrawing it, then again bringing it near to the rags. Chhuon knew both men. One was Chhimmy Chamreum, second son of the head of the Chhimmy family, the second-oldest family in Phum Sath Din. The other was Chan’s brother, Ny Hy San. Chan, very much in control, very cool, stepped toward his brother. “You idiot!” he denounced San. “What were you doing out here?” Chan reached to grasp the rag from San’s mouth but Hang grabbed Chan’s arm. “Let go of me. I’ll deal with him. He’s my brother. This is a family matter.”
There was commotion on the ill-lighted riverbank as soldiers subdued Chan. Still Chhuon watched. He did not move. Did not speak. Horrified, yet numbed, Chhuon, the rock, the undistinguished small stone which no one will notice, did not even gulp air.
San and Chamreum tried to vomit the rags from their mouths. The fumes alone made them nauseous—the taste, the fear intensified. Soldiers made bets. San tried to push the rag from his mouth with his tongue, tried to work his jaw, tried to call to his older brother and to Chairman Cahuom, but the rag had been jammed in, packed in, and his gagging could not dislodge it.
“The new orders...”—Major Nui broke into Chhuon’s numbness—“the new orders, you’ll post them tomorrow, eh? Anyone caught attempting unauthorized travel will be dealt with severely. Anyone unaccounted for will cause three others to be punished.”
Chamreum’s rag flared. He could not scream. San shuddered, unable to watch, unable to look away. Chamreum jumped horribly as his skin burned. Unable to hold his breath he inhaled through his nostrils. Hot flaming gases were sucked into his nose, yet still his diaphragm dropped, dropped uncontrollably, dropped sucking the flame into his lungs. His face burned, the stench was disgusting. San leaped back from a soldier approaching with a torch. Chhuon recognized the troop. He was not NVA but a local militiaman, a boy, his own son’s tormentor, Khieng. Chhuon bowed his head. San dodged back, jerked left, right. The soldiers laughed at the comical man with the gasoline-wet rag hanging from his mouth. Chamreum collapsed to his knees, dying from suffocation, not burns, dying as the fire consumed the oxygen about his face, dying because his seared lung linings could not have absorbed oxygen had there been any in the air to inhale.
Chan could not watch, could not save his brother, because soldiers still held him. He turned his head to Chhuon. The rock, the stone. Somehow, Chhuon, under Chan’s eyes, saw himself at fault. Somehow they read him, read his mind, learned of the escape plan. How many attempted? How many others were caught, will be caught? Did any succeed? The village will hold Chhuon responsible. Hadn’t he picked the night? How many villagers saw him with the major tonight? There was no other way. The rock, the stone. Without emotion Chhuon watched as Khieng lunged at San, watched as the rag ignited, as San fell back, down the bank into the current. The flame died. There was thrashing as San tried to right himself in the rushing waters of the Srepok. More thrashing then nothing. The current grabbed him, washed him away.